Why I decided to get off Instagram

I’ve wanted to get off Instagram for a while now but I was too afraid. I didn’t want to lose all of the followers I have spent years building because those followers are also my readers. And readers are a pretty important thing to have when you’re a writer. Especially as I will be coming out with a book in the next couple of years and I would like those readers to read it.

In the end, however, I decided that “wanting to promote my book in a few years” wasn’t enough to justify posting daily Instagram photos into perpetuity. So I closed my account and I feel so relieved to have done so. It’s not that I think Instagram is inherently bad, but there were a few negative effects it was having on my life and for that reason, I chose to opt out.

1. It wasn’t productive

As I mentioned, the main reason I stayed on Instagram for so long was that I’ve been working on a novel and I know I’ll want to promote it someday. In fact, I once went to a writers conference in which a publisher told us that they wouldn’t even look at publishing a book unless the author had at least 10,000 followers on one social media platform (and they would really prefer a newsletter list over a social media following).

It makes sense. Whether you go the traditional or self-publishing route, the author is the one ultimately…